While growth is popping out all over town now, the future did not always look so bright.

Antioch village leaders, facing a declining downtown, banded together in the mid-1980s to form Community Action Now (CAN). The group, loath to see their downtown wither away like so many others nearby, hired a consultant and in various ways sought to revitalize downtown, noted Don Marski, who with his wife, Jane, owns Ben Franklin Home Accents.

At that time, the downtown became a tax-increment financing (TIF) district to help encourage rehabilitation and new commercial building construction.

More than 10 years later, Antioch has every reason to crow.

Downtown is healthier. The village has a new medical center, vacancies are down and merchants are finalizing plans for a downtown facelift, much of it paid for by TIF funds.

Included will be new sidewalks and lighting as well as a complete redo behind the east side of Main Street, where utility cables will be buried, a new access road and parking lots built and the buildings refurbished in a uniform beige color, LeMere said.

The volunteerism and community spirit that helped revitalize downtown are the most often-mentioned best attributes of Antioch.

In fact, two of the town's most ambitious public projects would not have been possible without volunteers, said LeMere.

Centennial Park was built in five days entirely with donated materials and labor. And a new park being built to the east of downtown out of an old landfill on the edge of Sequoit Creek, part of a wetlands restoration project, is being done with barely any tax money, save for engineering plans for filtering runoff through the new ponds.

When friends from Chicago routinely ask Antioch Township Supervisor Tim Osmond: "How can you live in a little town like Antioch? There can't be anything to do," he laughs.

"We never have any free time," said Osmond, who is also chief of the Antioch Rescue Squad. "It will be a Rotary function, or it'll be a church function, a Lion's Club function or squad function or chamber function or government function. We're going all the time. Every weekend is jammed."